Forum:Memory Alpha and copyvios
Hi, I wanted to make you all aware of a concern I have found while browsing ST:EU. Some of your articles, such as Nebula class, are direct word for word copies of their Memory Alpha counterparts. This actually constitutes a copyright violation. Unlike most Wikia, which are published under GFDL (such as ST:EU), Memory Alpha is published under CCL. That means you cannot copy over information from Memory Alpha to ST:EU, Wikipedia, Memory Beta, or any other GFDL project without the express permission of all of the editors that went into creating the Memory Alpha content, as they wrote it with the legal expectation of being published under CCL, not GFDL. Pages copied from Memory Alpha are copyright violations. --OuroborosCobra talk 15:13, 13 December 2007 (UTC) :I got this from Memory Alpha:Copyrights - "If you are simply duplicating the Memory Alpha article, the second and third obligations can be fulfilled by providing a conspicuous direct link back to the Memory Alpha article hosted on this website.". :Doesn't that cover what we do here? – 15:36, 13 December 2007 (UTC) ::I would say so, yeah. --Luke80 16:45, 13 December 2007 (UTC) :::And then, also... ::::Therefore, it is perfectly legal to read an encyclopedia article or other work, reformulate it in your own words... :::...Which is what happens here, or we are in the process of doing. Most of our material copied from MA (always accompanied by links to MA, as a rule... and I don't hear complaints about all the linking we do to them) has mutated or will mutate in rewrites, revisions and additional information as we concentrate more on fan universe/non-canon elements. Their articles go through revisions; ours go through revisions, and eventually they don't look the same. It'll happen to too, eventually. Since we don't focus on canon, which MA does, we use MA as our "canon source". On top of that, we're all supposed to be part of Wikia now. I understand that Wikia doesn't use Creative Commons as MA does, but it's still considered "fair use". (And, bottom-line... this is a copyright complaint from someone on a site whose entire existence hinges on using copyrighted material. Kind of like the pot calling the kettle black.) 17:24, 13 December 2007 (UTC) Read the top of the section you are quoting in Memory Alpha:Copyrights: :Anyone is free to use the text content of Memory Alpha in web sites, articles, or other publications, provided you follow the guidelines of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License, which establishes the following requirements: * you may not use the works for commercial purposes, * you must acknowledge the authorship of the original article, and * for any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. :If you are simply duplicating the Memory Alpha article, the second and third obligations can be fulfilled by providing a conspicuous direct link back to the Memory Alpha article hosted on this website. '' You are not operating under CCL 2.5, therefore you are not meeting the qualifications. In addition, you are not meeting the third qualification by publishing under GFDL, as you are not stating the terms of our the CC license, but in fact the GFD license. --OuroborosCobra talk 18:23, 13 December 2007 (UTC) ::::OC is completely right. There are several things you are allowed to do with text that is published under a CC-by-nc license, but ''this is not one of them. The "nc" (non-commercial) clause, for example, disallows reuse for commercial purposes. The GFDL does not make this restriction, so if you're copying some CC-by-nc text to "re-publish" it as GFDL, you are circumventing this clause. Also, as stated above, the "by" clause makes attribution necessary - which I understand as some text actually stating where the content of a page is taken from, not just some link to MA. -- Cid Highwind 20:41, 13 December 2007 (UTC) :::::Okay, when I take some material from Memory Alpha articles, I rewrite it, and put a link to Memory Alpha at the bottom. Is this okay to do under this? And, to be honest, isn't this kinda like the pot calling the kettle black? Doesn't MA get its information from sources like the Star Trek Encyclopedia and other "permitted" sources? --usscantabrian 21:32, 13 December 2007 (UTC) :::::Oops I kinda repeated what Sas said there, but I have to agree. --usscantabrian 21:47, 13 December 2007 (UTC) ::::I'm a little surprised about all these pot/kettle/black accusations being thrown around here. Memory Alpha articles aren't, and never were, written by copying word for word material that was published under an incompatible license (as, for example, copyrighted material from the Encyclopedia would be). -- Cid Highwind 22:17, 13 December 2007 (UTC) :::::I think what we mean (or at least my view on it) is that that information is not Memory Alpha's; it's taken from other sources which Memory Alpha does not own. And no one has still answered whether or not a rewrite of the articles in one of our own words (with the same ideas) still violates this... --usscantabrian 22:24, 13 December 2007 (UTC) ::::Depends on what you consider a "rewrite", I think. What OC referred to in his initial comment here is the act of creating an exact copy of MA content on this site. This is a violation of the CC license, whether that content is changed in a later edit or not, because the exact copy is still available using the history function, and may be assumed to be "GFDL" by anyone who doesn't know (or care) where the text is from. The "Nebula class" article, which was used as an example, still has sentences that are identical to the apparent source article at MA. ::::If the "rewrite" you are referring to means to tweak a word here and there, so that the resulting text is not identical, then it might still be considered a derivative work of the CC-licensed original. ::::If it means reading some article, and using individual facts to form a new text, then this is never a problem... AFAIK, individual facts can't be copyrighted... ;) -- Cid Highwind 22:42, 13 December 2007 (UTC) :::::I'll give you an example of my work. Denmark is an example. USS Wellington (NCC-28473) is another. I have done several, and I try avoiding word-for-word copying (i.e. getting the idea behind the sentence but not taking it directly if it can be helped.) In some cases, i.e. "Denmark is a nation-state..." is very hard not to copy without adding superfluous words! --usscantabrian 22:51, 13 December 2007 (UTC) Changing articles While this is all being sorted out, I've begun seeking out MA copies for rewriting. So far, I've done USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D), and Dyson sphere. There's no need for all the canon info in there, regardless of possible violations. If anyone would like to help, please feel free. Is there a way to more easily find these articles? (probably not, but I figured I'd ask). I've been going through the "What links here" page for the Malpha template. Not everything linked to that template is a copy, of course, but it's as good a place to start as I've found. Sas, maybe this could be added to the STEU Projects list? --TimPendragon 04:53, 14 December 2007 (UTC) :I also would like to see canon material briefly paraphrased rather than copied verbatim for stylistic reasons (not just to avoid copyright issues). Some entries are just too long and fan-fiction content is lost in the noise. On the other hand, I personally am a little nervous about going in and filleting existing material, for fear of offending the volunteer who wrote it in the first place -- I guess I need to recite the wiki slogan "Edit boldly" a few times. :-) --Leckford 12:14, 14 December 2007 (UTC) :Hey Tim, I will help. Just let me know what (hopefully not long) articles I can edit, and I'll do it when I have time. I also agree with Leckford and this was something I originally brought up: do we really need to know some of this stuff in some of these MA-like articles? Isn't the link to MA or MB enough to expand upon the further information if someone wanted to know, let's say, for Denmark, that Chakotay mentioned Beowulf as coming from Denmark? Can we follow the KISS principle when it comes to MA stuff that has nothing to do with any of our fan fiction? Just some food for thought. -- (A very much recovering from last night's graduation party) usscantabrian 21:07, 14 December 2007 (UTC) ::That's something I've been in favor of for a while, but with everything else to do, rewriting MA copies has been on the backburner. Now, it needs to come forward. As for articles, I think just start looking. Warp drive is an example - there is some different data, but the bulk of it is lifted from Memory Alpha (and maybe even ST-Voyager.net, according to the reference link at the bottom). You wanna tackle that one? --TimPendragon 21:52, 14 December 2007 (UTC) :::I'm also adding the template to articles that I find, so check Category:Pages copied from another source. --TimPendragon 22:06, 14 December 2007 (UTC) ::::Also Category:Pages copied from Memory Alpha --TimPendragon 18:02, 15 December 2007 (UTC) Okay, so... now I have a question; I noticed that the USS Defiant (NCC-1764) is marked for rewrite... which is okay, but at this point probably a third of it is fan stuff... what does this rewrite constitute? Do we have to go in and change lines like "In 2268, the Defiant responded to a distress call in an unexplored sector" to "The Defiant, in 2268, heard a distress call in a previously..." ? Or can we just say there is a cutoff where articles like the Defiant are good to go? If so, where is that cutoff? Aabh 22:39, 15 December 2007 (UTC) :The sections before the fan data kicks in are word-for-word copies of Memory Alpha. Any direct copying (well, more than a couple "standard" sentences) is too much. Besides, in most cases there is absolutely no need to go in such detail of canon events. This article just needs a very brief summary of the Defiant s involvement in and . Notes on important Memory Beta data would also be appropriate. --TimPendragon 23:30, 15 December 2007 (UTC) ::I have to agree that I'm having problems with the re-writes as well. Can't we cut out half the canon stuff that has barely anything to do with anything on this wikia? For example, I created the article and just reworked the sentences (so they aren't an exact word-for-word copy... it is very hard to convey the meaning when rewriting so extensively). My point is, do we need the whole "For the Uniform" information if it's not pertinent to any series? Isn't this what the links to MA and MB are for? And what if series (such as mine) don't really recognise most MB things as canon? --usscantabrian 00:19, 16 December 2007 (UTC) :::Okay, I've redone the article the way I think it should be (really glosses over the "For the Uniform" information) but kept the original information in the code. Is this more what we are looking at with some of these articles? And it is really difficult to rewrite the first sentence on some of these things. I mean, if it's a certain class of starship... it's a certain class of starship. LOL --usscantabrian 00:38, 16 December 2007 (UTC) ::::That was a good rewrite, but take a look at it now: . For articles like this, I think that's all we need. Look at San Francisco, Pavel Chekov, Enterprise (NX-01) or USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D). ::::I think you guys are overthinking this whole process just a little. You don't have to parse and paraphrase the article sentence by sentence. In fact, please don't! And if some basic sentences like "X is a X-class starship in service in the X century" are the same, that's okay. ::::Ultimately, just hit the highlights, and a few interesting, but brief tidbits if its a "major" article. For most, it shouldn't take more than two paragraphs to cover canon data, except for the major entries like the Enterprise''s or a main character. Am I making sense? --TimPendragon 06:20, 16 December 2007 (UTC) :::::'For further discussion, please see Talk:STEU Project:Rewrite.''' --TimPendragon 06:25, 16 December 2007 (UTC) Page histories Since this isn't about the rewrite project itself, I'm posting this here: Since we aren't supposed to have MA copies, I think it might behoove us to delete/restore pages which were MA copies (but are no longer). This effectively hides the previous, MA-copy versions of the page from all but admins. All versions after the rewrite can & should be restored. But I'd like to hear what others think, before taking that step. If there's no feedback within the next couple days or no massive response in the negative, I'll go ahead and start that. Jrofeta (I'm sure you're reading this), feel free to help if you'd be so kind. 15:30, 21 April 2008 (UTC) :Sure, I'll give you a hand. It is going to be a bit difficult to hunt them down. Why not extend the deletion to all MA copies? – 04:37, 22 April 2008 (UTC) ::That would create a lot of redlinks, but I don't see how anyone can really object. Least then it would (further) let us know those articles are needed as STEU originals. The only difference from the present situation (of MA tagged copies) is that we'd be depriving readers of the canon material, but links to the MA pages are sufficient. However, we'd have to read through them and make sure we're not removing pertinent fan-uni info, and if present, retain that by recreating the articles (deleting and starting over). So, yeah, I say, let's do it. 06:55, 22 April 2008 (UTC) — Or, also, meant to add, turn those pages into redirects to their MA counterparts (still requires deletion/restoration). 07:00, 22 April 2008 (UTC)